September 25, 2010

It happens to be something that would be good for us. (Eating vegetables.) But our resistance to doing things the government eagerly and earnestly promotes is a strength. Don't be disappointed. Be encouraged.

15 comments:

Except that the government has the power to penalize us for not doing what we don't want to do that it thinks we should be doing. Perhaps there will be tax incentives put in place to reward those who at least buy vegetables and punish those who don't, a new deduction on the 1040 with receipts attached. Or who knows, maybe it will adopt the British approach to enforcing recycling rules, government workers crawling through trash cans and dumpsters at night checking to see if there's any veggie detritus and ticketing anyone whose garbage doesn't include any lettuce and cucumber peels.

First they try persuasion, then they go for coercion. We shouldn't shrug this possible threat off quite so easily. The government is not a benign force in our lives.

There are the Michelle Obamas of the world, or as my son calls them, The Concerned Mothers

Then there are the people who don't really like being told, but they like being a part of something.

Mostly, there are people who like knowing there are other people being told what to do. There are so many people who don't know how to live their lives (not us, mind you), and so it is satisfying to see the government telling them what to do/saving them/protecting us from them.

"Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables."

The answer, obviously, is the government needs even more power and more control! Ask Michelle Obama.

Don't you know that you're supposed to compost vegetable matter? You're not supposed to put it in the rubbish bin. You'll be fined if you do, just like if you put recyclables in the rubbish. Can't put those things in the landfills! /s